The Legendary CBS Night Mare…The Scene Of The Crime
The Legendary CBS Night Mare…The Scene Of The Crime
Since 1936, when CBS Radio converted The Hammerstein Theater to a broadcast studio, magnetic field interference has been a problem at Studio 50. When it was converted to television in 1950, things got more difficult, but why? The problem is the building circled in each photo.
For those of us that don’t live in New York, or have an intimate knowledge of the city, I wanted to finally show you where “the problem” lived. The problem was a huge Con Ed generator inside the creme colored building. In the photo on the left, the tan building with the fire stars is the back of the old CBS Studio 52 (later the nightclub Studio 54) and we are on 53rd Street looking east toward Broadway. The dark building to the right of the creme generator building is the stage entrance side of CBS Studio 50.
In the photo on the right, we are again on 53rd Street, but now looking west with the white arrow pointing to the stage entrance for David Letterman’s show in Studio 50. The highest point between the arrow and circle is the Studio 50 dressing room elevator tower.
When Jackie Gleason returned to television in 1962 with ‘American Scene Magazine’, he wanted to do it in color and a few months before the show began production, CBS rented a color truck from Video Tape Productions with TK41s. Had it worked, the plan was to move the TK41s from Studio 72 (CBS only NYC color studio) to 50. Try as they may, the interference was too bad not only in the studio with the cameras, but in the truck too which was parked on 53rd Street. Even after moving the truck to Broadway, no amount of mu metal would work. It wasn’t as bad for the black and white cameras, but they too were internally modified with mu metal and mesh.
In ’65, the Norelco plumbicon cameras arrived but preparations began months before with a visits from Phillips engineers for magnetic field measurements which were done at 50 and 52. The six cameras that Norelco built for 50 were called PC72s as they had special modifications and very heavy mu metal shielding. Everyone swears the pictures were great, but…I think that once the Sullivan show went color from Studio 50 on October 31, 1965, there were problems Gady Rienhold remembers there was a period of either a few weeks or months that the show was done from The Broadcast Center. Suspiciously, within eighteen months, Marconi Mark VII color cameras were installed at Studio 50. For some reason, they got along with “Mr Generator” a lot better than the Norelcos. Thanks to Dennis Degan for the photos. What would we do without him?
Where was the genny in relation to the studios ?
Yes, it is a former Interborough Rapid Transit Company substation that used to power the Broadway-7th Avenue line (today’s #1/#2/#3) and the former 6th Avenue/9th Avenue elevated that traveled along West 53rd Street between 6th and 9th Avenue with a station stop at 8th Avenue & West 53rd Street. The el closed down there in December 1938, and later in June 1940, the City of New York unified and took control all of the properties of the private IRT (including that substation) and BMT with the city-owned IND into one system. See the linked image with the substation in-between the two theaters way in the far distant right background… http://www.nycsubway.org/perl/show?17963
Jackie Gleason hated to be followed around by a boom mic and tried to use wireless mikes at one point during his original live version of his show…but got a lot of problems from a vacuum outlet on the same block as the studio. In one of the kinescopes, voice actors were used to fill in the gaps in the dialog caused by this when they were mastering the Lost Episodes for syndication in the mid eighties.
I spent many days taping shows at the Ed Sullivan Theater. It was back in the Goodson Todman days when I was working on To Tell The Truth. I still see the building a lot, because it’s directly across the street from MAD Magazine.
Distribution wiring and magnetic losses in the transformers probably accounted for what remained.
I hadn’t thought of subways but the same theory applies. There were no efficient rectifier systems capable of powering trains back in the 1930s. Motor generator sets or commutator type synchronous rectification was all there was.
Wow, ladies and gents. This is some fascinating history. I love it, which is why I keep following this page. Keep up the good work, Bobby!
oh I see the Hello Deli David Letterman use to always talk to the guy who ran the place Rupurt 🙂
Two small corrections, if I may: The generator building was not owned by Con-Ed. It was a power conversion facility owned by the NY Subway System, which converted incoming AC from Con-Ed into 600-volt DC to power the nearby subways. Once they installed solid-state rectifiers in that building in the 1980’s, thereby removing the mechanical motor-generators that created the problem, the trouble lessened. But it never went away entirely. There are also TWO subway lines that pass very nearby the Sullivan Theater; One runs under 53rd street, the other runs along Broadway at the front of the Theater. I remember well when I worked in the Theater on Kate & Allie 1983-85 the rumble of the subways and the peculiar hue that appeared on the unshielded monitors in the studio when a subway train would pass by. Trains still create an incredible magnetic field, but now that monitors no longer have CRT’s, the effect is not seen.
Finally, the small arrow does not point to the stage entrance of the Theater. That entrance is actually towards the left, in the taller building with the elevator tower:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/13104592084/
WOW!! who knew that Con ed stuck a generator right on broadway? Not a good idea then or now!
The generator was likely there to power nearby elevators. Edison’s original distribution was DC and most elevators are designed to operate on DC, at least from that era. It should have been pretty easy to find the source. If the flux was sufficient to mess up magnetic sweep in cameras, it would have made a Boy Scout compass behave weirdly, too.